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Tuesday, 2 April 2013

Put not your trust...

As a plain, practical man of the world, I don’t think that the Prime Minister matters at all. As a mere matter of human importance, I should say he hardly exists at all.

Do you suppose if he and the other public men were shot dead tomorrow, there wouldn’t be other people to stand up and say that every avenue was being explored, or that the Government had the matter under the gravest consideration?

The masters of the modern world don’t matter. Even the real masters don’t matter much. Hardly anybody you ever read about in a newspaper matters at all.

Put not your trust in new leaders, better systems, new organisations or regulatory reorganisation – they may well be good and necessary, but will to some degree fail.

Human sin means pinning hopes on individuals is always a mistake, and assuming that any organisation is able to have such good systems that human failure will be eliminated is naive.Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby

6 comments:

Reading just now about Ms Kerswell and some other over-promoted flunky making sure new civil servants have tougher contracts in future makes me understand why she was so keen to collect a £420,000 good-bye from my county council, and rush off to the next sinecure.

Kent public servants have been doing this for years, but probably it happens everywhere else as well!

We have KCC elections in a month, and the UKIP name will figure large on where I place my cross I can assure you!

The Chesterton quote is brilliant, and although Welby's comment is doubtless true, their juxtaposition is very telling. The former is a man of perception, originality, and true genius, whereas the other is a clever corporate executive with a pious turn of mind.